Thursday, March 01, 2007

Bush to veto a bill?

Wow...twice in six years. Must be a record. Oh, well, at least it would actually be a good thing this time. From the Boston Herald:

President Bush would veto legislation championed by Democrats and labor groups that would make it easier to organize unions by eliminating employer rights to demand secret-ballot elections, the White House said Wednesday.

The House is to vote on the legislation Thursday and, with help from pro-labor Republicans from the Northeast, it is almost certain to pass. But the margin of support is expected to fall well short of the two-thirds needed to overturn a presidential veto.

The Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the card check bill, is the top legislative goal of labor groups eager to reassert themselves with the emergence of the Democratic majority.

The current system is broken because employers can coerce and intimidate workers into rejecting unionization, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a phone interview this week. The House bill, he said, is ”the most important improvement in labor law in many decades.”

But the White House, in a statement, said the measure ”would strip workers of the fundamental democratic right to a supervised private ballot election.” Substituting a card check mechanism under which unions would get bargaining rights as soon as a majority of workers at a plant sign approval cards, ”would turn back the clock 60 years and return us to a failed system.”

Under the bill a company would no longer have the right to demand a secret-ballot election, overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, before a union can be certified.

The legislation also imposes tougher penalties on companies that violate the rights of workers trying to organize and sets up a binding arbitration process to prevent companies from thwarting a new union by bargaining in bad faith on an initial contract.

Big Labor says that secret ballots allow employers to intimidate employees. However, there's an intimidation that's being missed, albeit intentionally, by the left: the intimidation of employees by pro-union employees. Here's how it would unfold:

Let's say you work for Company X. Company X doesn't have an employee's union, however a group of employees there decide they want to form one.

Today: They go around hounding and browbeating their co-workers into signing the petition to organize a union. Very few employees will want to piss off their supervisors and colleagues ("Come on, Jim, sign the damned thing! Why would you want us to suffer? Wait 'til Bert finds out what you did!"). So even if they don't want a union, they'll sign the petition, knowing they can always vote "Nay" secretly. The signatures on the petition aren't from people who want to form a union, but are signatures of people who are agreeing to VOTE on the matter.

If enough signatures on the petition are gathered, the employees of Company X get to hold an election as to whether to form a union. The ballots (which are secret ballots, i.e. no names attached) are tallied, and the most "Yea" or "Nay" votes will determine if a union will be formed at Company X.

Big Labor's plan: They go around hounding and browbeating their co-workers into signing the petition to organize a union. Very few employees will want to piss off their supervisors and colleagues ("Come on, Jim, sign the damned thing! Why would you want us to suffer? Wait 'til Bert finds out what you did!"). So even if they don't want a union, they'll sign the petition. However, now the signatures on the petition are enough to form a union, with no election necessary. No secrecy or protection of employees' rights.

If you think that employers can coerce their employees, but co-workers cannot coerce each other, you're officially an idiot. Need proof? Think about labor strikes, and what happens when union employees cross the picket to actually do their jobs. Their striking union thug co-workers make their lives a living hell! If bullying groupthink plagues the workers (or, in the case of striking, "not-currently-workers") during strikes, do you honestly believe that said groupthink won't occur anywhere else in the workplace, such as organizing a union in the first place?

About Me

I am not conservative or Republican. I am a "neo-libertarian." It’s more logically consistent than conservatism and liberalism.
Liberals are not evil; however, their ideology has proven to be a demonstrable failure and incredibly harmful when administered on the body politic.
I have lived in the South all of my life. While I'd love to travel, I don't want to live anywhere else. Though I currently live near Jacksonville, FL, I call Memphis home (lived there most of my life). I'm a Florida State University Seminole, through and through.
All viewpoints are welcome on my blog. However, if I ban you or edit/delete your comments, it's because I found you to be offensive, repulsive, or otherwise useless. My world, my rules. Deal with it, or beat it.
Finally, I had a happy childhood, so my worldview has NOT been "warped" by a lousy upbringing. Quite the contrary: I have been blessed, and my outlook has been molded accordingly. I won't apologize for having grown up in a loving, middle-class family.